Army, Guard in lobbying war for the Apache

The Guard has its own arguments why it should retain some of its Apaches. | Getty

Campbell has the support of the Pentagon’s top civilians, including Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Fox, who spoke at last week’s breakfast. Fox backed the Army’s plan, saying Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had studied the issue carefully. She then told a roomful of Guard supporters the Guard wasn’t as well suited as the active Army for the Apaches, which she said have to be ready to be deployed to war zones quickly and often.

The aircraft require more training hours than other helicopters, she said, and active-duty soldiers have more time for training than part-time Guard members. She also said attack helicopters didn’t make as much sense for the National Guard, which often helps with disaster relief efforts at home.

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The Guard, on the other hand, has its own arguments why it should retain some of its Apaches. Part of that is ego-driven by pilots eager to fly attack helicopters over utility choppers. And Guard members fear that — after more than a decade serving alongside their active-duty counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan — this could be a first step toward stripping them of their combat roles and relegating them to support jobs.

Guard advocates say they could retain some Apaches without undermining the cost-saving parts of the Army’s complex aviation restructuring plan. The counterproposal, they say, would allow them to continue flying an aircraft that’s been in the Guard since the 1980s.

“The crews and maintainers who have been flying these in the National Guard have been doing it for decades,” said the defense official involved in the dispute, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the news media.

Added John Goheen, a spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States: “If you concentrate all your Apache units in the active component, where’s your strategic depth?”

Like the Army, the Guard has been dispatching top officers to Capitol Hill to drum up support. Hunter and other members of Congress said they’d heard from both sides on the issue. And Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said he hadn’t made up his mind yet about whether he supports Wilson’s plan to form a commission, but noted that the Army has made strong arguments.

The Army’s aviation restructuring was announced in February by the defense secretary as part a “broader realignment of Army aviation designed to modernize its fleet and make it highly capable and more affordable.” Under the plan, the Guard would give up all 192 of its Apaches and, in return, get about 111 Black Hawks, which Hagel said would “bolster the Guard’s needed capabilities in areas like disaster relief and emergency response.”

The Army also would retire its Vietnam-era Bell Helicopter OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters, using the Apaches and RQ-7 Shadow drones to fill the Kiowa’s armed scout role.

The Guard’s counterproposal that’s circulating on Capitol Hill would allow it to retain about 108 Apaches, according to details provided to POLITICO.

The fight over the helicopters comes amid a larger war of words between the Army and the Guard over the Pentagon’s plan to shrink the Army Guard by about 20,000 soldiers, from 355,000 to 335,000 by 2017, a cut that isn’t as steep as the planned drawdown in the active Army.

Last month, Maj. Gen. John Rossi, director of the Army’s Quadrennial Defense Review office, told the website Breaking Defense that Army Guard units take longer to be fully trained and, for that reason, often were not assigned to the most tactically complex missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His comments set off a backlash in the Guard community, which is sensitive to any suggestion it isn’t as good in combat as the active Army.

“Drawing distinctions between the components during times of constrained resources only serves to damage all of our total force Army components and tarnish a proud institution,” retired Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, a former director of the National Guard Bureau, told Breaking Defense.